Note to Self.....

Don't sleep with the heater at full belt.... I am so groggy today. I feel like a half baked potato....make that a mash potato.

I cannot wait for the weekend and want it to be here now. It's the first of my three minibreaks this month. My friend A and I are going to Berlin this weekend, then I'm off to Barcelona the weekend after and then it is four days in the Black Forest over Xmas.

I really haven't done much travel since I arrived in September except going to Paris a couple of times. The first two months here was spent looking for a job, marrying a bottle of scotch and having a nervous breakdown. I think I underestimated how full on it is moving to another country. And there is the misconception between english speaking cultures that a move between one of these countries won't be that hard because there is no language barrier. Yes we all do speak English but it's a completely different language once you get there.

The first two months, I stayed with an old best friend of mine M; he and I lived together in Sydney many years ago when he was in Australia on a working holiday visa. We've remained close ever since. If it hadn't been for him, I think I would have been back in Australia by now. He offered his spare room rent free until I found a job which was very generous of him. Yes he did live in Reading (west of London) which is kind of like Woollongong without the beach but with the same ratio of pregnant teenagers and bogans ....or chavs as they call them over here. Oscar Wilde was jailed in Reading; Kate Winslet is from Reading and there is the Reading Festival and the television series Beautiful People which is shot in Reading. I kept reminding myself of these highlights every time I commenced the two hour late train journey home from a boozey night out in Soho and for the first two months of unemployment and a smithereened heart, that was nearly every night. Not to mention that an off peak return train fare was £20; peak is £34......it is cheaper flying to Madrid.

All that aside, it was lovely to stay with M. His houses backs on to the River at Reading with a lovely terraced garden. Catching the dying days of Summer sipping cheap aussie wines (there are more here than are in Oz) was a nice distraction to the turmoil in all directions that I was experiencing. It's nice now though to be right in the middle of it all in Kings Cross. The flat is the first place I looked at; it was renovated and clean and had a dish washer, dryer/washer and a fan forced oven which seems to be a rare combination in London town. And my flattie seems relatively sane albeit 12 years my junior. The best part is that I'm a ten minute walk from work, twenty minutes from Soho and West End and 25 minute walk to the cool stuff of Shoreditch and Brick Lane. Life is harder here than in Oz; I've basically gone back to living like my university days; no car; walking everywhere and buying homebrand! Not to mention I haven't flatshared with a stranger in nearly 15 years. But then again I didn't move here for it to be like home!